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Explores the influence of contemporary radicalism over Oscar Wilde
This book reads Oscar Wilde's literary texts in relation to his open support for revolutionaries, along with his expressions of solidarity with Irish republicans, anarchists, workers and migrants. Framing Wilde's literary writing in relation to his very active participation in the radical political culture of the fin de siècle, Ó Donghaile argues that, contrary to contemporary representations of Wilde as an effete and socially disengaged figure, his aesthetical radicalism was informed by and contributed to a broader set of progressive political initiatives being pursued at the end of the nineteenth century.
Consisting of previously unpublished material, the book provides a politicised and historicised account of Wilde's key works by situating them within the framework of his very pronounced ideological commitment to these radical political causes.
Deaglán Ó Donghaile is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Liverpool John Moores University.
List of contents
Series Editor's Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Wilde and Politics; 1. Anticolonial Wilde; 2. Coercion and Resistance: Vera ... or the Land War; 3. Class, Criticism, and Culture: 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'; 4. Fairy Tales for Revolutionaries; 5. The Politics of Art and The Picture of Dorian Gray; 6. Civil Disobedience and The Importance of Being Earnest; 7. 'De Profundis', 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' and the Politics of Imprisonment; 8. Oscar Wilde - The Lost Revolutionary?; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Deaglán Ó Donghaile is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Liverpool John Moores University. His first book, Blasted Literature: Victorian Political Fiction and the Shock of Modernism was published by EUP in 2011. His research focuses on the relationship between literature, political culture and violence in late nineteenth and early twentieth century writing.
Summary
This book reads Oscar Wilde's literary texts in relation to his open support for revolutionaries, along with his expressions of solidarity with Irish republicans, anarchists, workers and migrants.
